Support Aeon

‘Aeon, for me, continues to be one of the best places to spend a quiet afternoon, in the company of some of the most brilliant minds around.’

Shivam C, India, Friend of Aeon

Aeon is a registered charity committed to the spread of knowledge and a cosmopolitan worldview.
But we can’t do it without you.

Donate now

Aeon is a registered charity committed to the spread of knowledge and a cosmopolitan worldview. Our mission is to create a sanctuary online for serious thinking.

No ads, no paywall, no clickbait – just thought-provoking ideas from the world’s leading thinkers, free to all. But we can’t do it without you.

Donate now

Become a Friend of Aeon to save articles and enjoy other exclusive benefits

Make a donation
×
Newsletter Privacy Policy

Aeon email newsletters are issued by the not-for-profit, registered charity Aeon Media Group Ltd (Australian Business Number 80 612 076 614). This Email Newsletter Privacy Statement pertains to the personally identifying information you voluntarily submit in the form of your email address to receive our email newsletters

More generally, when visiting the Aeon site you should refer to our site Privacy Policy here.

This Email Newsletter Privacy Statement may change from time to time and was last revised 5 June, 2018.

By clicking ‘Subscribe’ you agree to the following:

  • We will use the email address you provide to send you daily and/or weekly email (depending on your selection). We also send occasional donation requests and, no more than once a year, reader surveys.
  • The email address/es you provide will be transferred to our external marketing automation service ‘MailChimp’ for processing in accordance with their Privacy Policy and Terms. We use MailChimp to issue our newsletters, donation requests and reader surveys. We have no control over, and assume no responsibility for, the conduct, practices or privacy policies of MailChimp.

Unsubscribing

You can change your mind at any time by clicking the ‘unsubscribe link’ in the footer of emails you receive from us, or by contacting us at support@aeon.co 

If you want to review and correct the personal information we have about you, you can click on ‘update preferences’ in the footer of emails you receive from us, or by contacting us at support@aeon.co

Security of your personal information

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. We have taken reasonable measures to protect information about you from loss, theft, misuse or unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. No physical or electronic security system is impenetrable however and you should take your own precautions to protect the security of any personally identifiable information you transmit. We cannot guarantee that the personal information you supply will not be intercepted while transmitted to us or our marketing automation service Mailchimp.

Sharing your personal information 

We will not disclose your personal information except: (1) as described by this Privacy Policy (2) after obtaining your permission to a specific use or disclosure or (3) if we are required to do so by a valid legal process or government request (such as a court order, a search warrant, a subpoena, a civil discovery request, or a statutory requirement). We will retain your information for as long as needed in light of the purposes for which is was obtained or to comply with our legal obligations and enforce our agreements.

Access to your personal information

You may request a copy of the personal information we hold about you by submitting a written request to support@aeon.co We may only implement requests with respect to the personal information associated with the particular email address you use to send us the request. We will try and respond to your request as soon as reasonably practical. When you receive the information, if you think any of it is wrong or out of date, you can ask us to change or delete it for you.


Coral X-rays

3 minutes

Mars habitat

5 minutes

Hoplites! Greeks at war

8 minutes

Street photography, 1838-2019: a photo for every year

20 minutes

Are you sure? Truth, certainty and politics

6 minutes

Aeon for Friends

Find out more

Under a powerful X-ray laser, coral reveals weather patterns from centuries ago

Like rings on a tree, coral exoskeletons grow in layers, helping paleoclimatologists learn about weather trends and phenomena from as many as 500 years ago. When exposed to a synchrotron – one of the world’s most powerful X-ray machines – in a Stanford University lab, the coral’s secrets become even more pronounced, revealing weather patterns and ocean temperatures down to the week, and giving researchers a highly detailed and accurate look at weather over several centuries past.

Producer: Jason Jaacks

Website: Deep Look

Aeon for Friends

Find out more

How 3D-printing robots will get Mars home-ready for our arrival

NASA has tentative plans for a manned mission to Mars sometime in the 2030s. Between now and then, there’s still much that needs to be sorted. To start, massive dust storms, high levels of radiation, low temperatures and a lack of water make the Martian surface an unfriendly place for long-term visits. Taming it for human life will likely prove one of the most demanding and complex engineering puzzles in human history. With those extraordinary obstacles in mind, in 2015 NASA announced the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge: an open call asking designers and architects outside the traditional aerospace industry to create plans for Martian living centred around 3D printing. One of 10 finalists announced in 2019, this plan from the design practices HASSELL and Eckersley O’Callaghan envisions teams of 3D-printing robots building a protective shield on the Martian surface several months in advance of a human landing. Upon arrival, astronauts would then work alongside the autonomous robots to piece together an inflatable, modular habitat.

Video by LightField London

Aeon for Friends

Find out more

Frozen for millennia, an ancient Greek soldier is freed to charge into battle once again

The artifacts that underlie so much of our understanding of the ancient world can often feel like brittle remnants of a dim and dusty past that’s hard to access without context and extensive knowledge. But sometimes just a little kineticism can transform a bit of pottery into a living story. Such is the effect of this animation produced for an exhibition at the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology at the University of Reading in the UK, which breathes life into war scenes from a vase found on the island of Euboea and thought to date to roughly 550 BCE. The story follows a spear-wielding hoplite (citizen-soldier in the infantry) as he moves through several stages of the wartime experience. After witnessing a ceremonial animal sacrifice performed by a priest, he departs for battle alongside his fellow soldiers, fights the enemy and creates a trophy from their discarded equipment to mark his side’s victory. Learn more about the video at the Panoply Vase Animation Project website.

Art director: Sonya Nevin

Animator: Steve K Simons

Website: Panoply Vase Animation Project

Aeon for Friends

Find out more

Historic street view: an image for each of the 181 years since the dawn of photography

Just a decade after the first surviving photograph was taken, photography became widespread enough that, today, the Canadian film archivist and YouTuber Guy Jones could assemble this parade of streets worldwide – one photograph for each year from 1838 to 2019. The resulting montage offers a scattershot urban history of modernity, chronicling seismic shifts in transportation methods and fashions, as well as the more subtle evolutions of storefront signage and roadway surfaces. The video also provides a meaningful window into the history of the medium itself. At the dawn of photography, the black-and-white images are deliberately framed, with the camera often drawing the attention of its subjects. In recent photos, as the camera has become more ubiquitous, it’s often less artfully employed, and its presence goes mostly unnoticed by the people whose lives it freezes in discrete moments. 

Editor: Guy Jones

Aeon for Friends

Find out more

What wrapping a rope around the Earth reveals about the limits of human intuition

If you tied a rope tight around the Earth’s equator and then added a single yard of slack, would the extra material make any noticeable difference to someone standing on the ground? Yes, actually. The answer comes as a surprise to most people, but the additional bit of rope raises it high enough off the ground for our eyes to easily discern it, and our feet to easily trip over. That fact might seem trivial, but the early 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein believed that this chasm between human intuition and physical reality revealed something important about the fallibility of our thinking. After all, if something that seems obvious to almost everyone can be totally false, what else might we be wrong about? This video from the Center for Public Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz breaks down the mathematics behind Wittgenstein’s knotty example, and asks whether it should make us all feel a bit less certain about even our most deeply held beliefs.

Producers: Gregor Clark, Jon Ellis

Animator: Adam Ansorge

Aeon for Friends

Find out more

Under a powerful X-ray laser, coral reveals weather patterns from centuries ago

Like rings on a tree, coral exoskeletons grow in layers, helping paleoclimatologists learn about weather trends and phenomena from as many as 500 years ago. When exposed to a synchrotron – one of the world’s most powerful X-ray machines – in a Stanford University lab, the coral’s secrets become even more pronounced, revealing weather patterns and ocean temperatures down to the week, and giving researchers a highly detailed and accurate look at weather over several centuries past.

Producer: Jason Jaacks

Website: Deep Look

Get Aeon straight
to your inbox
Join our newsletter
Aeon is not-for-profit
and free for everyone
Make a donation
Essay/
History of science
Curving the Universe

A century ago, a team of scientists chased the arc of starlight across a total eclipse to prove Einstein right on relativity

Matthew Stanley

Essay/
Animals and humans
Green-eyed pets

Commonsense tells us that both dogs and cats experience jealousy. Are we being anthropomorphic or can we know for sure?

Paul Thagard